PREPARED FOR THE BEST

January 18, 1991

8:30 and 11:00 a.m. Worship Services
John M. Buchanan

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Isaiah G2:1-4
Matthew 25:1-13

"Then the kingdom of heaven will} be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their
lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five
were wise." ~Matthew 25:1 (NSRV)

Something like that always happens. You can count on it. I don't
recall presiding at many weddings that did not include at least a minor
mishap. Sometimes they are not so minor.

Robert Fulghum says that performing most weddings "is like joining two
people trying to cross a mine field." Fulghum tells about marrying a Polish
Jew from Brocklyn and a Detroit Irish Catholic, and all the attendant
problems. “I note in passing," he wrote, “that weddings always tend to get
a little out of hand. I've never seen one get smaller or stay on budget.
One thing always leads to another. It's kind of like marriage itself. Or -
life. And why not? When it comes to joy and celebration, let it be
expansive, always." [It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It, p. 135, 138]

Ministers soon learn that there is something about the event that
invites mishap. Even those weddings which, from the perspective of the
pew, appear ta be going smoothly, prabably aren't. It usually begins
during rehearsal... the main purpose of which, I've always thought, is to
allow tomorrow's mishaps to identify themselves. It's at the rehearsal
that the best man telephones from Schaumburg to say he's lost, and the
parents of the bride have rooms at the Hilton and decided to walk because
they assumed we were just up the street, and then when they arrived tried
all the wrong doors. Sometimes the license is forgotten, or the rings.
Sometimes the flowers are undelivered, or the vows misspoken, the bride
unkissed, It's marvelous! To those who undergo it, a wedding is one of
the very important events in life, and in almost every case, one of the
happiest.

So, isn't it remarkable that when Jesus was summing up, near the end
of his own life, that he should choose a wedding as an analogy for the
Kingdom of Heaven, a wedding with all its agony and ecstasy, all its grace
and its mishaps?

According te the custom of the day, the guests assembied at the
bride's home, on the evening of the wedding, and were entertained by her
parents. They and the bridesmaids wait for the groom. He may in fact he
concluding last minute contract negotiations. In any event, he sends
messages every now and then to announce that he is indeed coming. Finally,
accompanied by his friends, carrying torches, he arrives. The bride's
guests light their torches and go out to greet him. And then, in a festive
procession, in a fiaod of light, the entire party walks to the groom's hame
where his parents are waiting for the ceremony and the extended banquet
which will follow and continue for several days. [J. Jeremas, Rediscovering
the Parahles, p. 137]

That's the setting. Ten bridesmaids are waiting for the groom. The
wait is a long one and they fall] asleep. Nothing wrong with that, by the
way. What goes wrong is that when he arrives and everybady wakes up, five
of the youne women don't have enough oil to fuel their torches. The other
five don't have enough to share. So while the wonderful torchlight
procession is happening, these five are out, frantically scouring the town
for lamp oil. And when they finally find some and buy it and return, it's
too Jate. They missed the event.

And it is easy to miss the point of this little story. It would seem
at first to be a warning against falling asleep. But that's not it. The
point here is being wise - shrewd enough to be prepared for the very best
that can happen.

The early Christian Church loved this little story about the
bridegroom arriving late. The reason is that the early Christians had to
get used to the idea that the return of Jesus, which they fully expected,
had not happened. It was beginning to dawn on them that maybe it wasn't
going to happen, or that whatever Jesus meant about returning to he with
then, it wasn't going to be a descent from the clouds, surrounded by
angels, at the end of the world. Maybe he would come in a different way,
and maybe their task, instead of withdrawing from the world, selling all
their goods and waiting for the imminent end, maybe their task was to be
faithful in life, to continue the daily tasks of life, watchful for his
coming which will happen in surprising, unexpected, but cammonplace ways.
And maybe they reasoned, if you are obsessed with the final, cataclysmic
end of the world, the victorious second coming as some Christians always
have been, maybe you might miss the first coming

It's exactly what happened, when you think about it in the aftermath
of Christmas. Christians celebrate the coming of a Christ nobody expected
and very few recognized. The religious hopes of the peaple in Bethlehem
and Jerusalem and Galilee at the time focused elsewhere on a political
leader who would restore the monarchy of David and some of thase who waited
for the Messiah hoped he would be a guerrilla leader who would take
advantage of the patriotism of the Jewish people and their deep longing for
freedom and independence and organize a revolution. It is clearly what
some expected Jesus to do later. It may have been Judas' bitterest
disappointment.

Others probably expected a learned and brilliant rabbi or a new High
Priest. No one expected a carpenter from Nazareth, and no one expected a

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Messiah to say and do the things Jesus of Nazareth said and did. Like the
foolish bridesmaids in the story, his contemporaries were fooling around
with the paraphernalia of “Messiah waiting" and missed him.

What does it mean to wait? What does it mean - for us — to be
watchful, ready, prepared for his coming?

it means, first of ali, knowing that the bridegroom is coming; it
means that absojute certainty, even though none of us is able to articulate
it simply and clearly, that the final issues are resolved. It means living
with a strong sense of hope and expectation.

Christian faith maintains that history is not a meaningless drifting
in eternity, but a process which has a goal, a purpose, and that it will be
fulfilled. We have not been at our best when we have claimed to know when
and how that fulfillment will occur. In fact, using the obscure hints in
Scripture, we have been at our silliest when some of us calculated the day
and the hour, sold all earthly goods and waited for the end or were so
intent on the return of the Lord that the concerns of the warld were
regarded as unimportant. That's not the point. Christian hope is based on
the trust that the God who created the world will continue to love the
world and with gentle but firm providence continue to guide the world and
the human story to its fulfiliment. ,

Christian hope is as big as the whole story of humankind and as small
as every individual. Ultimate issues about ourselves have been resolved in
Christ, we believe. At baptism we are trying to affirm it. These little
ones are safe in God's love forever. Their end ~- like their beginning —
will be in God,

In the meantime, the journey may be difficult and dangerous and
frightening. Living in hope does not mean we are immune from the
difficulties of history. The early Christians heard this story on the eve
of a period of fierce persecution and we are hearing it this morning in a
time of enormous uncertainty and fear and dread.

And God's word to us, as it has come to countless millions before us,
at moments of historic uncertainty and tragedy and war, is that it is also
a time of hope, because God is the Lord of history; and that while the
days ahead may be difficult they are ultimately part of a process which
leads to God. Bringing it into a kind of radical personal focus it
means that everyone ~ everyone of those young men and women, American,
British, Saudi, Iraqi - everyone of them is a precious and beloved child of
God and none will ever be separated from God's love.

To live in hope is to know that whatever occurs in the days ahead,
there is always the possibility of peace - precisely because we trust one
who promises to come in unexpected and unanticipated ways; that however
dark the night becames, the light shines on the darkness and the darkness
has not overcome it.

A world without hope is a very dangerous place. A world in which all

accommodate to the inevitability of war will ultimately be a very violent
place. So we who believe God's revelation in Jesus Christ and trust it to

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be true are called to be hopeful, to hald on ta hope with tenacity, even
when everyone else has given up and the negotiations are aver and the tronps
amassed, or even when men and women are killing each other and the bamhbs
are falling. To helieve God's revelation in Jesus Christ and to trust ii
may mean, for some, going to war with both a sense of profound sadness, but
also confidence that the bridegroom comes and that there is always haope.

To Jive in hope is to expect more from political leadership. In
preparing for this sermon T was studying a little commentary on the
Parables written a generation aso by George Arthur Buttrick. Writing about
this parable he said that the nations were well prepared for war in 1934,
but no one was prepared for peace in 1918, We were not prepared for the
best. And so the worst happened and the World War resumed two decades
later. Our political leaders spent two trillion dollars in the 1980s on
the weapons and systems of war-making. At the same time, the infra-
structure of the nation crumbled. The poor got poorer, the rich got
richer, the health care system collapsed at the lower end of the economic
scale, the education system sagged, and city streets filled up with
homeless people with no place to live. We disregarded international law,
made fun of the World Court and refused to pay our United Nation dues. To
be prepared for the best, i.e. to live in hope, is to expect more from
jeadership than that. It is to expect at least equal effort invested in
working for the international justice which is necessary for peace as we
are always more than willing to invest in arming the warld.

To live in hope is to expect a commitment to structures of
international law and a renewed and consistent commitment to the World
Court and the United Nations, not only when it is convenient to us

To live in hope is to be faithful now, to choose a vigorous and
demanding life, deeply involved in the world and the difficult issues which
will determine the lives of our children and their children. To live in
hope is ta know that there is always light in the darkness.

The bridesmaids were waiting. And so are we all. The experience of
waiting is universal. Children wait to be old enough ta goa to school, to
ride a bicycle, to stay out late, to drive a car. Students wait for
graduation, for a job and for real life to begin. Young adults wait for
promotions and raises and the full acceptance of the adult world.

We wait for fulfillment, for happiness, cantentment. The
theological word for it is salvation. To be human and alive is to wait

The word of faith is that salvation comes in the love of a God who
came in the birth of a baby. The word of faith is a challenge to live
expectantly, always prepared for the best precisely because we know our
God comes to us in surprising, unexpected and commonplace ways, as we
live and work and love and hope.

Ranier Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young military

officer who wished to be a poet. In one of them he responds to the young
man's lament that he has lost his belief in God.

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The older pnet wrote at Christmas time, 1903, in a way that
beautifully captures the essence of this hope:

“Why dan't you think of him as the one who is coming,

who has been approaching from al] eternity?... What

keeps you from projecting his birth into the ages that

are coming into existence, and living your life as a

painful and lovely day in the history of a great pregnancy?"
[letters to a Young Poet, p. 61]

So in Jesus Christ God comes among us and heaven breaks into earth
when we are prepared to greet him.

Jesus Christ comes when Christian peaple live in haope and will not
pive it up.

Jesus Christ comes when faithful disciples express lave and
compassion and work for justice.

Christ cames in individual acts of courage, and caring and
peacemaking.

Jesus Christ comes when people who are lonely and isolated know that
they are held in the strong arms of love.

Jesus Christ comes when critically ill patients understand finally
that they are safe in God's love.

Jesus Christ comes when men and woman live difficult, dangerous days,
like these days, in the quiet confidence of those who know that there is
nothing that can separate us from God's love: Heaven breaks into earth
when faithful men and women live in hope and are prepared for the best

Amen.
+t tt t+ +
Came into our worid, 0 God, with your peace.
Come to your church, with your call to faithful witness.
Come to us, with your hope in Jesus Christ our Lord,
Amen.
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